Clarmont auction: There for the end

Tuesday

Jan 8, 2013 at 12:01 AMJan 8, 2013 at 10:15 PM

As the auctioneer raced through his patter, pitching pots and pans, silverware and kitchen equipment, Thom Coffman took a memory-lane stroll through the Clarmont Steakhouse. "This is a sad day," said Coffman, who bought the Clarmont in 1996 from Bill Bigelow. "I have a ton of memories, and 98 percent are good."

Steve Wartenberg, The Columbus Dispatch

As the auctioneer raced through his patter, pitching pots and pans, silverware and kitchen equipment, Thom Coffman took a memory-lane stroll through the Clarmont Steakhouse.

“This is a sad day,” said Coffman, who bought the Clarmont in 1996 from Bill Bigelow. “I have a ton of memories, and 98 percent are good.”

The iconic Columbus gathering spot closed a year ago, a victim of the economy. Coffman said at the time, “There comes a point where, if you can’t be successful, you can’t be in the business."

Opened by Frank Kondos in 1947, the Clarmont, 684 S. High St., served generations of Columbus power brokers oysters Rockefeller, lettuce loaded with bacon and blue cheese, and sizzling strip steaks.

“We used to do our own laundry down here,” Coffman said as he wandered through the basement, past the empty wine cellar and walk-in freezer, as the auction continued upstairs in the kitchen.

“On a busy night, I’d race down here and throw a load of napkins and tablecloths into the washer.”

The auction attracted an assortment of people, some seeking restaurant equipment and others hoping to take home a little piece of history.

“You see a lot of familiar faces,” said Portia Yiamouyiannis, who plans to open Nourish Cafe in Clintonville in the spring and was looking to stock her restaurant with bargains.

“You pay pennies on the dollar,” she said of the used restaurant equipment she had bought at auctions.

Restaurant-auction regulars, Yiamouyiannis said, fall into four categories: those who will scrap, resell or use what they buy — and memorabilia collectors.

Yiamouyiannis desperately wanted one of the stainless-steel prep tables with a cooler lined with shelves.

A new one goes for about $2,000, she said.

As the bidding started, her heart began to race, she said, and it beat even harder as the price flew past $200.

“You get so wrapped up in the excitement of the bidding,” Yiamouyiannis said, adding that this is why she sets a strict limit beforehand on what she will pay for an item.

Finally, she bid $290 — and had her prep table.

“My limit was $400,” Yiamouyiannis said, and then smiled. “But I would have gone up to $500."

The Clarmont fell into receivership soon after its recent sale, with debts of about $1.6 million, said William Wolfe, the court-appointed receiver. The property has been sold to Panera Bread for $1.1 million, he said. The chain might retain and use the current building, or tear it down and rebuild, he said.

Bigelow also was at the Clarmont for a last look at the restaurant he owned for 10 years.

“It was very sad when it closed. A lot of good friends lost their jobs, and a lot of good customers didn’t have a place to go,” he said as he stood in the kitchen.

The large kitchen, he said, hadn’t changed much over the years.

“I can picture it on a busy night,” Bigelow said. “There would be four people right there on the line (preparing food), two or three people in the salad area, the expediter out front, and busboys and servers coming in and out.”

Bigelow and Coffman, who spent a few minutes catching up, agreed that the restaurant business is really a people business.

“Some of our regular customers were like family,” Coffman said.

Although he said he is mostly over the heartache of having to close the Clarmont, it hit him hard on Thanksgiving morning.

“I woke up Thanksgiving morning and felt really bad,” Coffman said. “We were open on Thanksgiving for all those years, and I kept thinking about all those families who used to come here every year.

“I loved working Thanksgiving. We made a lot of good people feel happy.”

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